- Ham Equity
- Apr 16, 2013
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The first thing we do, let's kill all the cars.
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Grimey Drawer
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...there are also many, many ants who are parasitic and exist as parasites towards other ant species...
Wait, what? Really?
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Jul 7, 2020 21:09
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May 21, 2024 20:41
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- Ham Equity
- Apr 16, 2013
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The first thing we do, let's kill all the cars.
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Grimey Drawer
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Strategy 3, true parasitism, is the most complex and brutal one and only accessible for a few very special ant species. Those species are lacking a worker caste all together, they are exclusively made out of queens and males, nothing else will ever be born.
A pregnant queen is able to become virtually invisible for the victim ants via extremely complex pheromones and just walks into the victim colony. She searches for the or one of the existing queens and hooks herself up to her back, pushing her onto the ground and hindering her movement. Via chemicals she forces the workers to feed and take care of her, always making sure the original queen is staying out of the picture, but always still alive. She then can start laying eggs for baby queens and males which get taken care of by the existing workers and spread her genome that way. The males will meet with new queens and the cycle repeats itself.
Those parasitic queens no longer have legs or even a mouth, they can only move for a certain time by crawling like a worm and will stay on the back of the victim for the rest of their lives. They are so successful at being parasites that they were able to reduce almost all functions that enable them to take care of themselves and require a host to survive.
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Jul 8, 2020 00:21
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Jul 7, 2020 21:09
